Desafinado: Slightly Out of Tune
by AstralMiscreant
Summary: Regaining her memories was the least of Faye's worries, dealing with the fact that she was a psychologist was—and being stuck in a ship full of basketcases was only half the fun. A psychoanalytical take on our favorite Bebop misadventures. Post-Finale.
1. Chapter 1: Ain't That a Kick in the Head

**Desafinado: Slightly Out of Tune**

 _"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."_ -Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) _in On the Waterfront, 1954_

* * *

Session One: Ain't That A Kick In The Head?

"My memory...it finally came back..." She sighed in resignation. "Nothing good came of it though."

"Nothing good" would be putting terms lightly, nothing good, more so, nothing that had been life-changing, profoundly, eye-openingly good would be more precise to say. There were no sparks flying as if the old-rusted cogs within her mind began to turn in remembrance, no, it was more like a tiny flicker of something that once was fleeting was now more tangible than ever.

Thoughts, words, images, sounds, even just the most diminutive ring of a porcelain bell, was enough to throw her into some sensory overload of emotions. Bits and pieces... Bits and pieces...

Sometimes they came in a flurry, a rush of memories that came hammering down her frazzled mind in a tumultuous onslaught of images and sounds and other times, they came slowly, gently, ever so gently, like filling in plaster into cracks on the dry wall.

She jumped, scuttled, pushing faster and faster as her legs carried her uphill towards something so familiar... Something so fleeting, yet palpable all the same - enough that she felt if she were to just reach out, she could grasp it. It was almost there, she was almost there. With each thrust of her leg, as she pumped forward, muscles moving, sinews stretching, breath hitching in her lungs with each labored intake, bringing fire into the pit of her heaving chest, she felt a sense of purpose.

Run fast, stand still.

This was not like many times before, in which she would find herself in this very position, running and leaping in a rush towards her goal and away from the familiar melody of bullets and shouts.

The salty smell of fresh sea water, the cool breeze blowing in her hair, the familiar looming face of the merlion fountain now in shambles from being weathered down, and then there it was... Bits and pieces, bits and pieces.

At this very moment, she could feel almost every sensation more vividly than ever. She could feel the rush of blood through her veins, feel the tiny pinpricks of wind that brought the hairs on the back of her neck to stand straight, feel bits of swirling dust from old building debris brush past her cheeks, and above all, she could feel the steady beat of her heart as it pumped faster and faster from exertion or happiness? - she could not tell.

She waited her whole life to figure it out... Well, her life up until the point she was, to her greatest misfortune, awaken from cryogenic stasis. She was a woman without a past, a woman who intrinsically was a mystery to herself.

 _"Are you...Faye...?"_

How in the hell had she lived for these past three years of her revival? And, who, who in the hell was she?

How could anyone continue to live a life in which they have no memory of, a life in which there was no innate knowledge of oneself to build a foundation upon? How could one continue to eat, sleep, walk, or even dream without those few precious remnants of what could be called their life?

She was a spectre, a vague silhouette, of what had once been a living, breathing woman - she had had hopes, dreams, aspirations, but they were all gone now, gone away with the memories that made her inherently her; or more so, who she had once been.

 _"Are you a ghost?...They say they appear in places where they have the most regrets..."_

Faye Valentine was now a walking ghost with nothing but a superficial barrier, a facade, that she had carefully erected around herself from the time she had first awoke.

She needed that protection. What else could she do?

Given that she had nothing left but her implicit long-term memory, Faye could only make do with what she had. It was all semantics really, that was all she had left with her...and even then, some of the conceptual information she had once known during her lifetime had completely changed in these past fifty-four years.

 _A dog was an animal, food was necessary to survive, money is simply a human construct to determine value amongst things, the earth is round, the solar system was now habitable and earth was no longer, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose..._ All of this information, all of these facts, they were nothing to compare with the value of her past; her memories.

 _"A ghost from beyond..."_

So, she waited her whole life to figure it out... To figure out who the hell Faye Valentine really was. But up until this point, all she had to make up for her lost memories, was a overused beta cassette tape, its player, and a scant few images that seemed familiar, but fleeting all at once.

 _I remember._

She came upon it like an old dream, like that of the old black and white film noir movies she would always watch with her parents as a child, how they were fuzzy and blurry, a bit too novelty for her tastes, but with acting material far superior than any other film out of the Golden Era of Hollywood.

The mansion, white and regal, in all its scintillating glory. Surrounding it are gilded gates, the promise of tomorrow, the gold string of fate - and joy and warmth and love and life. Tall are the pillars of its foundation, yet small is the ground beneath; where a family of three reside. This is home.

The cogs began to turn again, the rust settling in, proverbial cobwebs ripping from their seams.

She remembers the time she came home from her first day in primary school with bloody knees all scuffed up to the bone from issuing a who-can-do-the-most-cartwheels challenge with another girl and landing unceremoniously on the schoolyard's asphalt - her father had reprimanded her at first, but soothingly stitched her up since he himself was an orthopedic surgeon.

Twisting and turning, the memories come unfurling from the cogs, episodic and vivid - like her first prom and how nervous she was and how Bobby Darin, the cool and collected dream boat who would smoke cigarettes by his locker and ditch school, but at the switch of a button, could school the teacher within fifteen minutes flat, was totally not the dream date she had thought him to be.

Or the time she won Miss Singapore International at seventeen, making her one of the youngest pageant contestants in all of Singaporean history, her mother could never be so proud.

And then that beautiful tune, that really old song that one could only find hidden under the clouded annals of time and stowed away in a vintage record case passed down from her Grandmother Eleanora... It was an orchestra tune, something from the the thirties with Al Bowlly's melancholic voice singing over the melody. She remembered playing it over and over and over on her grandmother's record player in the parlour until her butler begged her to stop.

She remembered this, she remembered that, she remembered a life that seemed like nothing but a dream now.

Myriad memories that coursed through her mind, through her veins, through her blood came in another onslaught, until one of the tiny wires in the back of her unconscious memories seemed to just click.

All too quickly now, comes the rush of the innate knowledge she once had, how her mind was once able to process the many levels of the multifaceted spectrum that was the human brain. How even now, she was able to discern every little nuance, every little kink in someone's behavior, but later use that information to manipulate them into her own liking.

How she thought she was simply inherently wicked and that she merely had the makings of a "manipulative wench" as the Lunkhead liked to call it in a cinch.

She remembers what she had become or rather, what she once was - she had studied rigorously, maintaining an outstanding four-point-five GPA to attend the National University of Singapore to earn her degree in in Behavioral Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience. She graduated at twenty. She was a psychologist, a damn shrink, though, not technically since she was not clinically trained in that department. But a shrink nonetheless, in the most simplistic way.

And with the new knowledge, or rather, the old knowledge, Faye continued on with tomorrow just like any day before.

* * *

A/N- **Song: Ain't That a Kick in the Head? By. Dean Martin**


	2. Chapter 2: Fly Me to the Moon

**Desafinado: Slightly Out of Tune**

 _"And what is that, besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean - besides something called a temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice? Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved." -_ Margo Channing (Bette Davis) _in All About Eve, 1950_

* * *

Session Two: Fly Me to the Moon

Spike came back on the twentieth of May, two months in Venus' lunisolar calendar time, and as if nothing had happened like most things go. He slipped in early in the morning, parking the Swordfish II in the flight deck of the Bebop as if it were just like any other day.

Jet yelled and Faye gawked, dropping her bowl of stale cereal without the milk because Jet had forgot to go grocery shopping this week. She watched the two men bicker, well, watched Jet reprimand the lanky man, while the Lunkhead himself did nothing but shrug and keep his hands buried deep in his pockets.

"Do ya' guys have anything to eat? I'm starving." Were his first words and just like that, Jet forgot all the unspoken profanities that dared to drip off his tongue and proceeded to walk in to the kitchen to fix the other man up something to eat.

Faye, was noticeably taciturn however, staying in her own corner, atop the chair across the infamous, and by that she meant almost evil-looking yellow couch, with a bowl of her stale cereal that she had swept up from the floor moments ago and a notebook in the crook of her left arm.

Spike eyed her cautiously, but said nothing, choosing only to slump down onto that damnable yellow couch and close his eyes.

"Do I have something on my face?" He queried after twelve tense minutes of silence that clung to the air, eyes still closed, with that annoyingly smug voice he saved especially for her. She did not avert her gaze still glaring at the man who should have been dead.

"Chatty aren't we?" She replied with equal sarcasm as she opened her notebook and procured a pencil from a pocket in her cigarette pants.

"Answering questions with more questions, huh? A bit childish don't you think?"

"Only because I'm speaking to one right now."

She began to jot down little notes on her pad, small observations that she had now noticed in Spike's demeanor that somehow sparked that same old interest she once had as a psychologist. Who knew that in her presence, the whole time, stood the most perfect case for observational learning, the basket case himself in all his dull, emotionally-constipated glory. It would be the case study of her lifetime, the case study of all case studies; it was brilliant, utterly, brilliant.

"If I'm a child, you're an infant." His voice was monotone, nothing spectacular, no inflections, just stale and boring much like her cereal.

"Mhm," she hummed as she began to pen down more and more words, her hands working a mile a minute. "If I'm an infant, you're a fetus."

"Well, you're a bitch." ...And they were back to being Old Spike and Faye again the famous bickering duo.

"Better than being a fetus, you know, since bitches actually possess conscious thought, and all, enough to tell you how lame your comeback was."

 _"I'm glad you're back on the Bebop you, Lunkhead."_ Was left unsaid hanging in the air as if it were ready to be wrung out to dry under Spike's burning cybernetic eye.

He kept quiet after that - his only indication of conceding in their little argument. It was all fun and games really. And Faye went back to scribbling down words in her little black notebook while Spike went back to dreamland or limbo or hell or nothing or whatever the hell he did when his eyes were closed.

Save for what little noises, that of Spike's slow and steady breathing and the sound of graphite scratching on to paper, the only significant noise was the sound of something frying in a pan and Jet shuffling about in the kitchen the other room over.

Faye looked over her notebook and gazed intently at the man, noticing every detail, every nuance of what made Spike inherently Spike - from the way he so easily lay on the couch with his arms crossed behind his head, to the way a small wrinkle from furrowing his brows made its way on the side of his temple, to the way he twitched every so often, the way he ground his teeth in silence, to the visible frown lines pulling on the corners of his lips.

He was as rigid as a block of ice trying to feign the smooth undulations of flowing water.

It was obviously contrived, poorly done, and all in all, not much of a good act - but Faye would never speak on it. She would rather observe to her heart's content, drinking in every bit of information this cold shell of a man could offer.

After all, nothing could get past one who made it a living to strip down the human mind into the barest layer of truths, one who studied the grey matter and its many facets that was interconnected between neurons and more neurons enough to produce the most basic level of awareness; the human conscious thought process.

"Breakfast is ready! If any of you are hungry, you better get your lazy asses up before it's all gone," Jet's voice reverberated across the halls.

With that, Spike stood up lazily, arms still crossed on the back of his head before ambling towards the kitchen with Faye following suit as she continued to scribble in her notebook.

Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs with chives and burnt toast with the last of the scraps he found in the fridge. "I should go grocery shopping today," Jet mumbled as all three bounty hunters huddled around the table.

Faye sat opposite of Spike, sipping lightly on a box of orange juice and occasionally taking a bite of toast, too engrossed in the notebook she had been lugging around ever since he walked through the hangar. "Faye, wanna come with? I'll let you pick out the cereal this time for the bounty you pulled in last Thursday," Jet continued.

Spike's eyes narrowed as he chewed on his food at the exchange before swallowing. "Since when were you two all buddy-buddy?" There was no malice in his voice, just pure, unadulterated curiosity that rose with each word.

"Since we had to start pulling our own weight for two," Jet replied. Since you left, was what he meant.

"When you dipped out of here, we had to find a way to compensate for a lack of income from a usual third party," Faye chimed in rather patronizingly as her head shot up from her writing. Her sparkling eyes darted towards Spike's muddy ones trying to gauge what reaction she would get from him.

"Yeah, well, Jet and I did just fine when it was just the two of us," Spike spat, his voice like venom," Don't see why it would be any different. I guess it just goes to show that you're utterly useless at pulling your own weight for Jet's and your own sake."

The woman's lips quirked up slightly, before she hastily began to jot down more words into the journal.

"Better than playing the disappearing act, but you know, I'm not one to judge."

She smirked, biting on the tip of her pencil in anticipation for whatever his response would be.

"Why don't you just shut the hell up, Faye? I get it, you two are a little sore that I dipped, can we just not fucking talk about this and have a decent fucking conversation," he shouted. His shoulders rose and sloped over and over again as he heaved in heavy breaths, angry and sullen and such a poor, poor image of a man.

Faye smiled slightly before writing again and Jet could do nothing but pinch the bridge of his nose. She paused, setting her pencil down gently and gave the two men a calculating stare - which had been mostly directed towards Spike. "Sorry," she said lightly. What would he say next?

Spike's eyes widened and she could have sworn that both Jet and the prick had nearly spluttered. "What the hell?"

"I said I was sorry, you're right. I was being a bitch -" she looked over towards the shell shocked man as he was beginning to speak again "-you didn't really say it, but we all know what you were thinking." She ended it with an airy laugh to help negate the mixture of anger and shock that the man was probably struggling to differentiate between his mind.

She knew it was wrong to antagonize a mentally unsound person, however this was Spike, and it was in her nature to do so - the fact that she could analyze some of his more volatile reactions was a bonus too. However, to blunt the momentum of her patronizing, she had to resort to doing something out of the ordinary. Because it was a given fact of the universe that Faye Valentine never apologized (maybe only once when she had come across Spike after regaining her previous memories, and that, was a moment of weakness - so it did not really count all things considered).

"Whatever..." He muttered before shoving another forkful of egg in his mouth.

Jet laughed abruptly, his booming laugh, reverberating around the makeshift dining room much like the way it always did. "Feels like old times, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," Spike said begrudgingly, nursing a hot mug of black coffee, still as angry and confused as ever.

Faye only smiled at this as she began to hum that old tune from her grandmother's record player.

A/N - **Song: Fly Me to the Moon By. Julie London**


	3. Chapter 3: They Can't Take That Away

**Desafinado: Slightly Out of Tune**

 _"Do you find me sadistic? You know, I bet I could fry an egg on your head right now, if I wanted to. You know, Kiddo, I'd like to believe that you're aware enough even now to know that there's nothing sadistic in my actions. Well, maybe towards those other... jokers, but not you. No Kiddo, at this moment, this is me at my most... Masochistic._ " -Bill (David Carradine) in _Kill Bill Vol. 1, 2003_

* * *

Session Three: They Can't Take That Away From Me

"The Therapeutic Relationship in the Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapies, Fundamentals of Contemporary Cognitive Psychology, Psychodynamics: What Are Our Unconscious Drives?" Jet read aloud as he picked up one of the textbooks she had plopped down onto the kitchen table hours ago. "Jeez, Faye, is this what you're spending your bounty money on?"

"Yeah," she mumbled, not looking up from reading and annotating a few notes.

"What's all this mess for?"

"Something about my past, I'm trying to find a way to retrieve some old information tucked in my mind, you wouldn't be interested," she shrugged.

"By becoming a shrink? Try me."

"Well," she hummed," you wouldn't believe me if I tried." He grunted, she kept on humming that old tune from her grandmother's record player. And then silence, they stood there in silence. The only noises that could be heard in the kitchen was the drip, drop of the faucet and the light tapping of Faye's pen against the table. Then it was nothing but silence.

"Spit it out, Faye, I ain't got all day," Jet said warningly.

Her shoulders slumped and she puffed out a very characteristically Faye-Valentine-melodramatic sigh. "I was a psychologist back in the day - had a degree in cognitive-behavioral sciences with a concentration in neuroscience. It was just a bachelor's, but I was working on graduate school to get my doctorate's at the time before they stuck me in a freezer," she laughed, but it sounded so bitter.

Jet was silent for a moment, his face was contorted in to an expression of disbelief. "You're kidding right?"

"Nope."

"So, you're a shrink?!"

"No, I'm not clinically trained as a psychiatrist, though I did spend a few months for a case study conducted by a professor friend of mine in an asylum back in my undergrad years. But in all legitimacy, I'm just a psychologist."

"Same shit, ain't it?"

"No, not necessarily. Psychiatrists are clinically trained to be able to diagnose and analyze mentally-ill patients. There's a whole lot of lengthy conditioning it takes to become a clinical psychologist and med school wasn't something I was too keen on. I'm trained under the neuroscience department - totally different."

"So, that explains this strange behavior," he said as he scratched his chin in thought," Your clothes, your hair, that damn notebook you carry around everywhere."

"I don't know, I guess the last vestiges of my memory just caught up to me -" she patted the bangs that had been let loose from the headband and fell down to frame her face "- And I always liked my hair down before, it just feels right."

"And the hot pants and crop top?"

"I save that outfit for special bounty hunts now, I guess?" Now it was her turn to scratch her chin in contemplation. "What's wrong with my pants and cardigans?"

"I dunno...they just don't seem to fit you...too conservative, err, they're just really...uncharacteristic?"

"It's more practical I guess, it gets drafty here... I always shivered walking around in those awful Daisy Duke's, Lord knows why I chose to keep on wearing it."

"All this in the span of two months, huh? Never thought I'd see the day," Jet laughed.

"Not like I changed at all, I just wizened up, ya know? At some point the bounty hunting life might catch up with me too, and maybe I might just retire and opt on a career change. Maybe I could put myself through graduate school this time."

"Woah there, Mary Calkins, not so fast. Don't tell me you're leaving again?"

"I said at some point, not right now, and Calkins was more self-psychology, too philosophical for my tastes. I'd liken myself more to Skinner and Bandura, thank you very much," she huffed.

"Look, point is, I don't think it'd be the right thing for you to do right now." His brows furrowed and he he tapped his foot on the floor incessantly, his anxiety dripping off his words like honey or cyanide - she could not really tell. She knew he just could not take another departure, the loneliness was eating up in the old man's conscience and it did not take a psychologist to figure it out. He was getting lonely.

"Hey, at least I had the decency to give you a heads up for when I leave - which by the way, will be in a long, long time," Faye retorted petulantly.

Jet smiled at this, knowing the broad was admitting what she had been trying so hard not too for the longest time. She considered the Bebop home.

"I'm gonna cook dinner," he called out as he reached under the kitchen drawers to pull out a few pans and saucers. "Check on Spike, will ya? Make sure he's not dead."

"Yes, mom," Faye grumbled and Jet could only roll his eyes.

A/N - **They Can't Take That Away From Me By. Ella** **Fitzgerald**


	4. Chapter 4: It's a Sin to Tell a Lie

**Desafinado: Slightly Out of Tune  
**

 _"I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names." -Rhett Butler_ (Clark Gable) in _Gone With the Wind, 1939_

* * *

Session Four: It's a Sin to Tell a Lie

Faye sighed as she weaved in and out of the Ganymede Art Gala hall, she had her gun tightly grasped between both her clammy hands, and cocked it before turning another corner. Her holster was bouncing incessantly against her thigh. The black dress she had slipped on felt so annoyingly tight at the moment, too. Overall, she was irate, uncomfortable, and the fact that her bounty was playing a game of chicken with her did not help in the slightest.

The bounty, from her initial deduction thus far, seemed to have a neurotic streak in her from the way she addressed Faye with high hostility at their first interaction, even when the bounty huntress lead no indication of what she was there for. After trying to strike up friendly conversation with the bounty, she was met with cold indifference, and after finally coercing the woman she saw an internal struggle within her baby-blue eyes on whether to stay or run off, meaning the woman was just as impulsive as she was hostile.

The fact that she was leading Faye on an impromptu game of cat-and-mouse alluded to the fact that she was less than emotionally stable. Judging from this impulsivity, Faye theorized, she would try to take the other path and head the opposite of the hallway.

Predictably, she heard slight shuffling echoing off one of the junctions from the hall opposite her direction and her feet led her towards that path. "C'mon O' Hara, quit playing hide-and-seek and come out and play!" She called out towards the hallway.

Another rustle and then a loud click, like metal clanging against metal, reverberated throughout that general direction and Faye broke out in a sprint with her gown flapping wildly behind her and her stilettos pounding on the granite floor.

"Got you now bitch," she muttered under her breath.

* * *

"Her name is Scarlet O' Hara. Age thirty-two, eyes: blue, hair: brown, height: five-foot-seven, and ethnicity: white; go figure," Jet read aloud from his computer screen.

Faye was hovering over him for the last five minutes while Spike lay on that same yellow couch in that same position just like every other day, pretending to doze off but probably carefully hanging on to each and every word the black dog was saying.

She glared at the computer screen and staring back was the picture of a beautiful woman, the type of woman you see from one of those vintage movie posters and weathered-down stamp boxes - all perfect pin curls, small red pouts, and white teeth with big crystal colored eyes that just looked so tragically sad, so tragically alluring, that they pulled you in and never let go.

"What is this, a nineteen-thirties box-office hit?" Faye laughed with her hands on her hips.

"What?" Jet raised a thick eyebrow in confusion.

She sighed. "You know, _Scarlet O' Hara_ , Southern belle plantation heiress played by Vivien Leigh - literally one of the most phenomenal actresses in Hollywood history?"

"Err, what?"

"You know _, Gone with the Wind,_ the nineteen-thirties box-office hit?"

"No, I still don't get it."

Faye pouted and proceeded to muster her best Golden-Era-Hollywood-Lead-man accent," Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. _Ring a bell?"_

"Nope," Jet shrugged and turned to Spike. "How bout you, Spike-o, does it sound familiar to you?"

"Nope, no bells have been wrung," was the lanky man's laconic reply.

"Ugh, whatever, you guys are hopeless. Don't you know a thing about pop culture?" She sighed before ungracefully throwing herself on the armchair across Spike and picking up her abandoned notebook that was perched on the coffee table.

"Not enough to give a damn."

"Oh, ha, ha funny -" she rolled her eyes and flicked through the pages "- What's this broad's case anyway?"

"Well, Scarlett O' Hara's wanted for several cases of grand theft and arson, murdered a curator, and as of recently, stole an art piece worth billions of woolongs. The Ganymede Museum of Historical Art put a bounty on her head for a whopping seventy million woolongs and a bonus of one hundred million if we were to get that piece back," Jet continued.

Spike whistled and Faye set her notebook down. "That's a total of one hundred and seventy million, holy crap. What's the art piece anyways, enough to make it worth billions of woolongs? Hell, if we ever find this broad, why not pawn it off the black market ourselves?"

"That's because I'm not too keen on playing the illegal card today, Faye," Jet said pointedly.

"Anyways, the piece is some small painting, some old earth relic -" he leaned into the computer screen and squinted at it "- and it has some weirdly painted red head guy."

"...Wait, don't tell me..." Her eyes widened as realization dawned on her. "It's not called _'Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe'_ now is it?"

"What if it is?" Jet mocked.

"Since when did you know French, planning on becoming a Parisienne hooker?" Spike chimed in drolly.

She ignored the men's comments. "What the hell? That woman is in possession of one of the most iconic pieces in world history! That's Vincent Van Gogh! Even during my time, that painting was hundreds of years old and it was worth over a hundred million, how in the world has it been preserved for so long?"

"Vincent-Van-Who, now?"

"Van Gogh, a Dutch painter during the Post-Impressionism movement. He had a tragic life story, a genius who wasn't recognized at his time and only sold like one portrait when he was alive. After his death, his paintings became some of the most coveted pieces of art in all history, most of, if not all, his paintings were worth millions and I'm not talking about the single digit range either. They're priceless."

"Well, aren't you just a walking history book. Got pop culture and art down to a form, huh?"

"Shut up. All I'm saying is that this piece is priceless, worth more than all our lives put together, and I'm not just saying this cause' I appreciate the finer things in life. I mean, literally, that painting is worth more than..."

"It's an inanimate object that's too old to even exist, I can't see why it'd be more valuable than human life. I mean, maybe it's worth more than your life but..."

"Shut up, Lunkhead."

"Just stating the facts," Spike said with a shrug.

"Fact of the matter is, it's worth a hell of a lot of money and the person in possession of it is worth a pretty penny too. I tracked down the IP address she's been setting all her main emails up in and if I'm correct, she'll be initiating another heist in Ganymede's annual art gala, so -"

"So, you want us to play dress up?" Faye interjected already knowing what the man was going to say.

"Yep, you'll be playin' the part. Spike, I want you to go after the painting, I know you're good with tracking hide-outs and you, Faye, will be going after Miss O'Hara," Jet finished with a grin.

"Let me guess, are Spike and I to be infiltration and you're gonna be Intel back-up?"

"You know the drill by now."

"Fine."

"Now, I say you two get your lazy asses up and prepare to head off to Ganymede within the hour. Got it?" Jet said as he stood up, his voice taking on its authoritative timbre once more.

* * *

As Faye sprinted down the corridor, she could here the loud clicking of O'Hara's own heels attempting to flee from her. She had her gun pointing away from her now and turned the next corner, prepared to fire a warning shot. But before she could even manage to turn, a fist cocked in front of her and sent her toppling to the ground.

"What the fuck?" Faye half-mumbled, half-shouted in annoyance as she began to rub her aching jaw profusely. She glared up to see the perpetuator herself.

Scarlett O' Hara, for all things worth, was an exceptionally beautiful woman and much to Faye's disdain, her bounty picture on file did not do her justice. Up close, she was really something, she sort of reminded her of a certain blonde she had hitched a ride with only a few months back, the same blonde who captured the heart of syndicate men alike; the modern-day "Helen of Troy" more like it, enough for men to wage wars for her, just to see her gorgeous countenance; just to be around her. It was her eyes, those tragically alluring eyes, that pulled her in and for a moment, Faye felt as if all time had stopped and she had been ensnared in the woman's Hollywood starlet eyes.

"You didn't think it was gonna be that easy, did you?" O' Hara smirked as she pulled out a butterfly knife from seemingly nowhere.

"You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did," Faye retorted as she wiped a drop of blood that had trickled down her lip from meeting the other woman's knuckles head on. Faye readied herself for a good old-fashioned ass kicking.

"Silly cowgirl... Couldn't even anticipate my next move."

"That's because you're so damn impulsive, I didn't know whether you were gonna turn the next corner or fling yourself out the nearest window, you crazy broad."

"That's just all part of the game, sweetheart," she replied as she flashed Faye her million-dollar-smile.

"Can we just fight, O' Hara?"

"Scarlett, call me Scarlett. If we're going to fight, I want you to address me by the name my mama gave me," the woman demanded before she lunged forward slicing in the air aiming to stab at Faye. To this, Faye ducked and weave, dodging every slice aimed at her body, trying so hard to be like water.

"Enough with the theatrics, Scarlett O-Hair-Ugh," she enunciated the last words mockingly before bouncing on the balls of her feet and pushing herself up to give herself enough momentum to land a roundhouse kick on the side of the woman's head. Scarlett collapsed to the floor, but used this to her advantage by slicing the back of Faye's left calf.

"Fuck!" The bounty huntress grunted as she reflexively clutched at the wound. With her other leg, she kicked Scarlett square in the face and the woman had tumbled five feet over.

Feebly now, Scarlett stood up and spat out some blood and one pearly-white tooth," You know, my mama told me a story once, that the Lord came down to earth, and blessed her with a dream while I was still in her tummy. He told her, you will name your baby girl Scarlett, it's so pretty isn't it? We were one of the last families left behind in the ruins after everyone migrated to the other planets, you could only imagine how bad life was down there. Mama always said I was a blessing. And then she gave me my name."

"Or a name you created yourself out of a box-office hit that has been withered away by the proverbial sands of time," Faye retorted. "I mean really, Scarlett O' Hara? At least be original."

"Shut up, you don't know a damn thing you're talking about," Scarlett flinched... And that was it. It was too late now, Faye had already found the root of all problems.

"Oh, I don't hmm? I think I know enough to understand that this whole persona you've contrived is your own way of rationalizing those fears of yours," Faye smirked as she dodged another punch and instead drew closer to the woman, the bounty in turn backed away unconsciously and a slight twitch in her jaw captured Faye's attention.

"That impulsivity, that hostility you showed me? Great way of displaying your little neurotic streak there, Scarlett. It just goes to show that there's a vulnerable, little girl tucked deep within, underneath the underneath. You're weak and Scarlett O' Hara comes to the rescue to help you cope with that weakness, doesn't she?"

"Shut your Goddamn mouth."

"That rationalization, hmm, perhaps it's more than that, isn't it Scarlett?" Faye tapped her chin lightly in mock contemplation. "Let me guess, you loved the movie _Gone With the Wind_ , huh? Probably so much that you were so fixated on that one female lead, the protagonist, the one that all the men begged for; the lady who was untouchable. And being the little country bumpkin you were, the thought of being born with a silver spoon, the thought of being the southern belle plantation heiress was so appealing, you just couldn't help yourself couldn't you?"

"Shut your Goddamn mouth, you bitch!" All fighting seemed to have halted altogether and the woman was now pointing an accusatory finger at her.

"And then, you got hurt, someone in that little inner circle of yours, someone blood related no doubt -who knows what the hell goes down there in the countryside- had went and done it. You were so little weren't you?"

The woman's eyes began to tear," No, shut up!"

"They touched you didn't they?"

"N-No, stop it!" She was trembling now and she lunged forward to throw a punch only to be stopped by Faye's swift hand. The bounty huntress squeezed down mercilessly on the other woman's hand and the sound of her knuckles popping resonated throughout the corridor.

"Denial and rationalization are a bitch, it's got you all fucked up in the head now. It festers and eats up at your conscious, tormenting you each and every day twisting your personality into something completely, utterly wrong, something so demented that you're not sure who the hell you even are anymore. Now, Scarlett O' Hara, you see, your neuroticism levels are on the other side of the spectrum, Miss O'Hara, they're unstable. So unstable are these levels that you manipulated your own name, fixated on the pretty, pretty plantation heiress and that fixation turned to petty theft because you wanted those pretty, pretty things, didn't you?"

"Y-You don't know a thing, you don't know a damn thing!" Scarlett was in hysterics now, with fat tears rolling down her once alluring eyes causing the layers of mascara and eyeshadow to trickle down with it. She was shaking so violently that the butterfly knife she had been grasping had now lay on the floor.

"Uncle or Daddy or whoever the hell it was touched you and made you feel funny and made you feel all scared and, mama...she just watched and acted as if nothing happened. And at some point, she even blamed you too, blamed you because the guy up and left. Blamed you for the reason why he touched you, didn't she? They stripped you of your most precious gift, he took away your innocence. And then you did what you thought was right, you went out and said, _why don't I just take, take, take?_ Because they took it all away from you, didn't they?"

"No, no, stop it! Please stop, please stop talking!"

"But, petty theft wasn't enough, was it Scarlett? Or whatever the hell your name is. You had to up the ante, now you're a high-roller, _a bonafide cat burglar_ some would say - scheming on priceless antiques, getting your filthy hands on things that aren't supposed to be touched. It's a game now isn't it? _Let's see how much sacred, untouchable items I can get my hands on in order to compensate for the sacred thing that was taken away from me,_ that sacred thing that should not have been touched. You can't get your innocence back, Scarlett, from all those pretty, pretty things you take."

"Sh-Shut your f-fucking mouth, y-you fucking bitch!"

"At first I thought it was just that, petty theft. Now I see it, I see it all. Your loss of self-worth, that precious self-actualization that tells you, yes, you're still human, it was taken away from you once you were forsaken by someone so close to you. And now, now you're trying to compensate for a lack of it by taking things that are seemingly priceless, things that are more worthy, more valuable than anything. Because what they took from you was more valuable than anything, wasn't it?" Faye's voice softened.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

"It was so precious, now it's gone. Does it hurt, Scarlett? Does it hurt to know that all these pretty little things can never make up for what you've lost?"

She crumpled to the floor now and Faye took this as an advantage to swoop in and grab the butterfly knife in one fluid motion. In a matter of seconds, the butterfly knife was pressed to the Scarlett's lithe, porcelain throat and bunches of her hair were wound tightly in Faye's other hand as she twisted the woman into a headlock.

"It's gone forever now, sweetheart," Faye taunted in her ear as she cuffed the woman's wrists together.

"Scarlett" broke out into hysterical tears, she was rocking back and forth now, sniveling all the while. The bounty huntress could only frown as she watched the woman cry out in pure, unadulterated pain. The internal conflict had finally consumed what was left of her, the walls cracked with the long withstanding repression fighting with her denial, until it swept over her entirety in a scorching flame burning all logic thought, burning all reason. When the fires would blow out, there would be nothing left, but the internalized hate that had been forming underneath the underneath for years now. It was such a sad sight.

"It's not fair! It's not fair," she cried. "It wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't supposed to happen, it didn't happen, it didn't, I swear!" She curled up, almost like a ball, and began to clasp her hands around her temples and a loud, ear-piercing scream came wrenching out of the woman's throat. "It didn't happen, it didn't happen! No, no, no, it didn't...I swear, mama, I swear..." She cried out once more. "Mama please, I didn't mean it, I didn't! It wasn't supposed to happen!"

"You're under arrest," Faye whispered somberly, bringing the woman to her feet." I'm sorry was what she wanted to say. She was so, so sorry. Sorry that the world was as cruel to this poor girl as it was to Faye. She was so sorry.

As if in the nick of time, a towering figure came striding down the hallway, shoulders slumped in that lackadaisical way, with his hands buried deep inside his pant pockets. His steps echoed off the empty hallway approaching slowly, ever slowly. When Spike finally made his grand appearance, he whistled at the sight of the two woman, one looking completely solemn and almost sad, while the other was... just a complete mess altogether.

"So, what'd I miss?" He queried casually.

A/N - **It's a Sin to Tell a Lie By. The Ink Spots, 1936**


	5. Chapter 5: I Get a Kick Out of You

**Desafinado: Slightly Out of Tune**

 _"I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven. Can you hear it? It's like when you put your head to the grass and you can hear the growin' and you can hear the insects. Do you like Beethoven?" -Norman Stansfield_ (Gary Oldman) in _Léon: The Professional, 1994_

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Session Five: I Get a Kick Out of You

It was as if thick thunderclouds came rolling in slowly, bringing in turbulence and destruction in its wake.

As rain poured down belligerently from the heavens, more devastation was left from the unforgiving storms, pouring down, crushing, and eroding away anything and everything it came across, how each and every poor, unfortunate soul who dared to cross its path was marked with a preordained and less than fortunate fate.

The air, heavy with a tension so palpable that it clung to itself like a negatively charged ion in a neutral environment, lead to nothing but a catatonic, and highly volatile state of being.

And it was not one, but two, thick thunderclouds both with their own negatively charged impetus that hovered above the Bebop bounty hunter's heads that night as they ambled through Ganymede Museum of Art's Halls with a sniveling bounty in their custody.

None had dared to utter a word, much less sound, as they pushed on with so little words, but so many thoughts that weighed heavily on their minds.

When Spike had come across Faye and the bounty, she had not spoken any words short of monosyllabic answers _, nothing, yes, no, not tonight,_ were but all the words the solemn woman could answer and the man was not too keen on indulging on a few short queries either.

He walked with heavy foot steps, a myriad questions still clinging to the back of his mind, festering painfully so, threatening to fall from his lips in an internal battle of _"I couldn't possibly care for what's bothering the wench"_ to _"I wonder what exactly is bothering the poor woman."_ And with each wretched thought that pervaded the threshold of his mind, his footsteps grew heavier with more than just the weight of himself. He did not care, he could not care, he should not care.

Brown eyes wandered towards the ones he had been seeking this whole time, and if he would have noticed, the gleaming jade was now muddled and almost dull. He could almost see it this time, the dark cloud that hovered over her head, seemingly raining down on her perfectly coiffed hair; the lightning striking down with electrifying cracks. He did not care.

Her visage had taken a darker shade now, almost angry looking, despite the fixed calm of her solemnity. It was a lie, though. He could not care.

They passed through the entrance, ambling towards their respective ships. She looked up, sad, calm, _too calm,_ " I'll take her with me. The Red Tail has more room."

Her voice - devoid of the usual emotion she held and it was a known fact of the universe that Faye Valentine was one of, if not the most, expressive, most emotional women in the galaxy in its entirety. He should not care.

"Fine. I'll com' Jet up for our coordinates," he muttered.

She did not answer him, only turning away with Miss O'Hara, who was quite a looker of a woman, and stalking silent towards her ship.

As he mindlessly piloted the Swordfish back towards base, the Red Tail trailed behind, his hands twitched on the steering wheel incessantly, wondering why, why he had the sudden urge to care or not to care or to even think at all.

He had his own burdens to bear, he had his own deep-pitted, unmitigated sorrow to quell. But at the sight of _hers_... knowing that deep within, there was a sadness that lurked and had now resurfaced, made her seem all too real now. And he hated it.

He remembered everything before this encounter. Finding the painting was easy, O' Hara was not one for covering up her track - more than an idiot than a criminal if anything.

He returned to the Bebop, met up with Jet, had a celebratory cup of ramen and a can of beer, before setting out to the Ganymede Museum of Art Hall to retrieve Faye and the bounty.

The art gala was extravagant, as per usual.

He weaved in and out of the crowd, all draped in rich tapestries and delicate jewels, and gathered from the maitre d' about a woman with "purple hair and looks that could make an old fart like me wish he were thirty years younger" chase after another "bombshell" who "looked like she came straight outta movie, I tell ya'" down the side corridor.

He came across the two woman, watched the whole encounter, with eyes wide as saucers. Watched Faye singlehandedly emotionally dismantle a woman down to her most vulnerable core with mere words that could almost make a man's skin crawl. Almost. Wondered idly to himself how and when the woman had come to possess the terrifying ability to carefully construct words like that, words that could make an Ancient Greek orator pale in stupor.

 _"Does it hurt, Scarlett? Does it hurt that all these pretty little things can never make up for what you've lost?"_ Her words resonate like venom in his blood, like cyanide to his brain, like the tears to his eyes.

...Can never make up for what you've lost, can never make up for what you've lost, for what you've lost, what you've lost, _you've lost..._

It was disconcerting, for the bounty - probably traumatizing, and above all, it was terrifying. What had happened to Faye? Who was this woman? He guessed he never knew her in the first place. And he hated that.

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A/N - Thanks for the review **LateNightConversations** , I love your feedback - it makes my day. I love reviews in general.

 **Song: I Get a Kick Out of You By. Frank Sinatra**


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